DUNKIRK — A former Batavia priest has returned to active ministry after sexual abuse allegations against him were found to be “not substantiated.”

Rev. Dennis G. Riter was placed on administrative leave in March. He returned to his duties at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Dunkirk this past weekend.

The complaints against Riter had been investigated by former Erie County assistant district attorney Scott F. Riordan on behalf of the Buffalo Diocese. Riordan was assistant chief of the Sexual Assault Bureau in the Erie County District Attorney’s Office and is currently a village justice in Kenmore.

Riter was pastor from 2002 to 2009 at the former St. Mary’s Church in Batavia.

MELBOURNE, Australia — The highest-ranking Catholic official to have been found guilty of concealing sexual crimes against children was sentenced to 12 months in detention by an Australian court on Tuesday.

The official, Philip Wilson, the archbishop of Adelaide, was sentenced a month after being found guilty of failing to report child sexual abuse. Archbishop Wilson is expected to serve his sentence under home detention, if a court agrees to the arrangement.

After his conviction, the archbishop gave up his duties but refused to resign. He was convicted of covering up abuse by a priest, Jim Fletcher, in the state of New South Wales in the 1970s.

Special agents with the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office used search warrants and subpoenas last year to seize evidence of a massive cover-up of clergy sex abuse in six Catholic dioceses in the state.

But despite growing revelations of sex abuse by priests in the Diocese of Buffalo, law enforcement authorities in New York aren't investigating whether crimes were committed in keeping the abuses hidden for so long.

Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn and a spokeswoman for the state attorney general both said that their offices don't have the authority to investigate a diocese for criminal matters, although district attorneys in Westchester and Suffolk counties used grand juries to do that 16 years ago.

These priests have been accused in court cases or published reports over the past two decades. This listing includes summaries of their cases and their status with the Allentown Diocese.

The Rev. Thomas Bender, former pastor of Most Blessed Sacrament in Bally, was sentenced to seven years' probation in 1988 for molesting a teenage Pottsville boy in the 1980s. A civil case with the boy and his family was settled by the diocese out of court. Bender was laicised, or defrocked.

Monsignor Lawrence J. Bukaty, former pastor of St. Katharine Drexel in Carbon County, was charged with public lewdness after a park ranger saw him fondling himself on a nude New Jersey beach in 2008. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and received probation. The diocese at the time said he was sent for treatment. He is no longer in ministry.

NEW ORLEANS, LA (WVUE) - The lawyer for a sexual abuse victim who landed a large settlement against the Archdiocese said more potential victims are coming forward. The victim said things should have never gone this far.

Attorney Roger Stetter has litigated nearly 80 cases against the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Last week, Stetter landed a half-million-dollar settlement from the Archdiocese for a man who said teacher and former Deacon George Brignac raped and sexually abused him at Holy Rosary Church.

The state Supreme Court has finally explained its decision last week to delay the release of a grand jury’s report on the sexual abuse of children in six Catholic dioceses. In part, the court wants to give the law establishing grand juries the once-over.

It wants to review criticism the grand jury included about an unknown number of individuals, determine whether they had ample opportunity to defend themselves and, if it concludes their due-process rights were violated, presumably rule on whether those folks should be kept out of a report that’s now hundreds of pages long.

HARRISBURG — After being criticized forhalting the release of a long-awaited grand jury reportinto clergy sex abuse, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday offered the first explanation of its decision, saying it needs to resolve legal challenges by “many individuals” named in the report who fear their reputations will be harmed.

In a five-page unsigned opinion, the justices offered no clues as to the identity of the petitioners, or the specifics about the circumstances of their objections. Instead, they explained that concerns had been raised about the secretive nature of the grand jury process and the ability of some people to address or respond to the allegations contained in the more than 800-page document, which details decades of abuse in six of the state’s eight Roman Catholic dioceses.

Christa Brown of Tennessee has called on Baptist churches for years to set up an independent panel to evaluate allegations of sexual abuse by clergy— such as the youth minister who sexually assaulted her as a teenager — and to keep predators from striking again at another church.

Pastor Jimmy Hinton — a Somerset Church of Christ minister who confronted his own pastor-father about the sexual abuse that landed the latter in prison — has worked to educate churches on the ways child molesters manipulate fellow believers into trusting them with their children.

A court just muzzled the ‘damaging’ findings on decades of Catholic clerical abuse. But it’s not over. ‘We are coming for them,’ says a state rep who was raped by a priest at 13.

Mark Rozzi thought he was days away from justice, or at least the beginning of it.

It started when he was 13, and a priest at his school in Hyde Park, Pennsylvania, started grooming him. For months, the Rev. Edward Grafftalkedwith Rozzi about sex, gave him alcohol, and showed him pornography. Then, one fateful day, he raped him in a rectory shower.

Rozzi didn’t report his abuse for 26 years. But he later learned that during that period, Graff was transferred multiple times between parishes, and allegedly abused children in Texas, too. In 2002, Graff was arrested on child-abuse charges after facing dozens of accusations,The Washington Post reports. He later died in jail.

Barbara Blaine, founder of SNAP, passed away on Sunday, September 24th, 2017. Her dying was sudden and completely unexpected. Words cannot express our sorrow nor are there words to express our gratitude for her relentless advocacy. She truly was a hero. There is an old saying, “well behaved women seldom make history”. Barbara made history and the world is a better place.